President Clinton, for instance, publicly supported antiracist, inclusionary policy while simultaneously pushing through NAFTA legislation that promoted, according to Duggan, the inherently racist, classist structures of global capitalism. But neoliberalism's most insidious characteristic, argues Duggan (Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity), is its wolf-in-sheep's-clothing claim of multicultural neutrality, purporting to isolate the 'natural' processes of capitalism from sticky issues of class, race and identity. Duggan, a professor of American studies and history at New York University, offers a thoughtful study of how ongoing, bipartisan sponsorship of free market economics has eclipsed social democracy and culture over the past 20 years. Sometime during the 1990s, conservative Republicans adopted the rhetoric of multiculturalism, liberal Democrats announced the end of welfare and thus, neoliberalism was born. Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. In a series of political case studies, Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail. After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. The Twilight of Equality?searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum they're always linked to politics. By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade.

Lisa duggan the twilight of equality